1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing multimedia messages. More particularly, the invention relates to methods and apparatus for (1) converting messages from one medium to another; (2) performing message content analysis; (3) utlizizing linguistically based analysis tools to identify message relationships regardless of media type; (4) interrelating messages according to content; and (5) providing a simple message reference capability to simplify message access.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Business people receive many different kinds of messages, e.g. electronic mail, voice mail, fax, video messages, attachments to electronic mail. It is possible and desirable to have all messages sent to a single mail box from which they may all be retrieved regardless of the message type. However, the only retrieval device which is capable of reading all of these different types of messages is a personal computer having a graphical display and audio video capability. Unfortunately, it is not always possible or convenient to retrieve messages with a personal computer.
A unified mailbox where all kinds of media (voice, fax, e-mail, and video) are made accessible and/or visible from virtually anywhere to a subscriber or user in one basket is a convenient means of communication when compared to handling multiple mailboxes with distinct media. Current solutions for a unified mailbox are inefficient, however, for someone with an intense communication style and a frequent need to handle his/her messages remotely. The mismatch of media type of the information and the capabilities of the various (often limited) devices used for remote access places a heavy burden on the user and the interface of the system. This is especially true for the interfaces utilizing a telephone with no display, or handheld devices with limited display capabilities.
Some of the problems arise in the context of compound and/or lengthy messages in connection with one or the other access means. For example, it is not possible to deliver voice and fax messages to a text-only e-mail capable device. It is also difficult to deal with lengthy e-mails delivered to a voice-only interface or to a text-interface with limited capabilities. Even when the device has a fully functional GUI interface, there is room for increased efficiency with large amounts of data. It is a challenge to efficiently present the information in various office document formats (e.g., Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Presentations) associated with a message. It is often difficult to locate and visually present related messages and attachments. When the mailbox has many messages in it, it is difficult to reference the messages.
Other problems arise due to the increased amount of information the unified mailbox can provide. Current mechanisms for organizing and presenting relationships among messages (listing by arrival time, subject, sender, etc.) are insufficient for a large number of messages of varying media and, especially, mixed media within a given message.
It would be desirable to provide a flexible, media independent way of finding and navigating related messages. With current systems, for example, the user is unable to recognize that there is a relationship between a voice message and a fax without listening to the voice message and displaying/printing the fax.
Because the presentation of unified mailbox information is more complex, especially if relationships as described hereinabove are incorporated into the presentation, identifying an individual item (message or message attachment) for further action can become problematic. How does the client/user identify to the server which message is to be acted upon? Are the entire message and its attachments to be involved? Is it a single attachment or only the original message body? And if the messages are presented in a “graph” format, how does the user select an individual item?
Current unified mailbox systems offer media sensitivity for message retrieval only when accessed with a graphical user interface (GUI) from a PC client. If a particular media or office document is attached to an e-mail, the user needs to click-on it in order to launch a specific application, for example, an audio player for voice, tiff-viewer for fax, video player to view a video message, etc.
For users with intense communication requirements (e.g. executives or customer service agents who receive hundreds of compound messages daily) there are no means to quickly process inbox messages except by the sender information, the subject line, and maybe few lines of the message body. In order to read messages, the user has to click on or mark a certain item in a graphical interface in order to get to the message body.
No content summarization of lengthy text messages or respective attachments is available yet that would remarkably improve the efficiency of handling the daily information avalanche in the office.
Current mailbox searching does not provide visual display of content and temporal relationships. No search capability exists yet for non-text messages.
If a unified mailbox is accessed from a telephone interface, voice and e-mail messages are retrievable and the user can listen to both. Existing text-to-speech technology provides a means to convert the e-mail to voice. A fax message can be forwarded to a fax machine or printer.
However, if an e-mail contains an attachment, the systems are able to indicate that, but are unable to access its content. Similarly, the contents of a fax or other documents attached to an e-mail are indicated but not accessible to the user accessing the mailbox with a telephone interface.
If an e-mail is lengthy, the user may be able to navigate through it by accelerating the text-to-speech reading speed. However, there is no means of text content summarization applied to shorten the process without eventually losing/skipping critical content.
If messages are forwarded to a handheld device via a wireless service but the device has limited text-display capabilities only certain parts of the email (From, Subject and a limited number of characters of the message body) can be displayed. If the critical information in the message is not in the beginning of the message body that is displayed, it is “lost” to the recipient. He/she has to use other access methods or make a call into the messaging system/server to retrieve the full text message (by listening to it or by initiating a printing to a device nearby).
As mentioned above, voice and other media attachments are indicated but not transmitted and/or displayed on a text-only display. The user needs to use other access methods to retrieve the messages. Additionally, no text content summarization methods are utilized to deal with access device technology limitations.
Full message sensitivity is only provided when accessing a mailbox with a multimedia PC. However even multimedia PCs lack any means to summarize message content in order to make it more efficient for the recipient to read his/her lengthy messages. Also, there are yet no means to summarize content of attached documents.
When accessing a mailbox with a telephone, the media and device sensitivity is limited to voice and e-mail. Again, no techniques of text content summarization are applied yet in order to make the retrieval of the message information over the phone more convenient.
In the case of handheld or mobile devices with limited text-display capabilities, the problem is that lengthy messages are usually not transmitted in their entirety by the wireless/paging service providers. Additionally, any other media attachments are “lost”. No content summarization of lengthy text messages or respective attachments is available yet that would remarkably improve the efficiency of handling the daily information avalanche in the office.